Charlotte Higgins

Hernan Bas has been living in Venice this year, painting tourists. He's aware of the ironies. (He is the kind of tourist, he tells me, who started

The Cuban-American artist likes to paint pretty young white men – inspired by his fascination with Holden Caulfield. So why do his portraits have a sinister edge?

Lydia Ourahmane has been living in Venice this year, in an apartment on the Giudecca with gorgeous views over the lapping, flickering water to the main Venetian island.

Florentina Holzinger's skinny dippers She's famous for her extreme performances and Florentina Holzinger upped the ante yet again in Venice

The festival can often make you queasy, as geopolitics are played out through the proxy of art. This year it feels on the verge of collapsing in on itself, says Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer

Despite a call for calm, a combustible mix of politics and protest punctuated the preview week across the pavilions

Every two years the art world assembles in Venice for a sprawling celebration of visual arts at which countries “compete” against one another for the prize of best national pavilion.

The decline of the glossy magazine industry as depicted in the sequel made me cry – but I shed no tears for how it was back then, says Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer

For four years, Vitalina Martynovska and her team had been working on a complete transformation of Kyiv's National Chornobyl Museum.

Russia’s recent assault killed two people, injured 90 more and significantly damaged many of the capital’s museums